Underground Warrior (12 page)

Still, Trace had stripped his armor for her, this time.

And no. He’d done nothing wrong.

She shook her head. Then, because she had no sense of self-preservation around him, she touched him, flattening her palms gently on his broad, bruised chest. She stood on tip-toe to lift her face, her mouth, hopelessly for his.

With a grunt of either pain or impatience, Trace caught her hips and lifted her to sit on his bureau. Then he enfolded her in his arms and completed the kiss.

She took another.

And another.

With hungry hands, she explored every undamaged bit of him that she could find. She wrapped her legs around his ribs, boots and all.

Her adrenaline-drenched blood thrummed through her with panicked rhythm—
have to go, have to go, have to go.
Everyone in this house, except for her and Dido the dog, came from Comitatus blood. The arrival of Smith, with or without his southern belle girlfriend, would only add to that. And Dillon Charles?

If she remembered correctly, he’d always gotten his way. He would be back.

He’d recognized her, after almost a decade since his father helped condemn her child self to prison. And yet…
Trace.
With a hand cupping her butt, he pulled her against his hardness, reawakening hunger for the same kind of feast he’d given her last night. His other hand spanned the back of her head, stroking her hair, encouraging her hot, needy mouth against his.

At one point he let her go to push her cowboy-booted ankles downward, so she dug at his butt instead of his—oops—his injured ribs. But almost immediately he’d cradled her head again.

She wanted…she wanted…

Hell, between turning down the volume in her busy brain and jacking up the volume in her five senses, she’d become nothing
but
want.

Reaching back to brace herself harder against him, her hand touched cold metal. She barely noticed until, as he rasped growling kisses down her throat, she curled her fingers onto the metal, clutched at—

“Ow!”

Trace leaned back, barely, and blinked at her like a man fighting hypnosis. His hands stilled. His body froze against hers. “What?”

Equally confused, Sibyl looked down at her stinging hand. At the odd slash of red across it.

Trace recognized the blood before she did. “The sword! Hold still.”

Immediately he was in his duffel bag, presumably for bandages and antibiotic cream. Parts of Sibyl wished he were still kissing her—especially the parts that felt cold and dissatisfied from his sudden departure. But part of her…

Her brain…

The part that had kept her alive so far….

She twisted on the bureau and looked at that damned, ancient sword which she’d accidentally grabbed. A Comitatus sword, perhaps the sword of Charlemagne. Swords existed for one reason—to hurt and threaten those weaker than their warriors. Especially those who couldn’t afford swords themselves. Which wasn’t right.

No matter how sexy those warriors proved to be, violence and domination and brutality could never be right.

“Here, hold this.” Trace lay a cotton pad over the line of blood on her fingers—no spurting wound, no near amputation, just enough to wake her from last night’s trance. “That sucker’s sharper than I thought.”

Sibyl shook her head. Her words fled, yet again—all of them except for
no, no, no.

She slid off the bureau, onto the floor. Her boots made satisfying thumps on the floor, despite her small size. Despite her insubstantiality.

“Wait, I gotta disinfect—”

She dodged Trace and hurried out the bedroom door, rattled down the stairs.

“Sibyl, what gives?” She could hear him behind her, chasing her.
Chasing her.

She moved faster, past the sound of Mitch and Greta chatting in the kitchen, past an inquisitive Dido the dog, to the front door. She fumbled to turn the knob with her left hand.

Thump.
Trace’s hand, big and hard, braced the door shut over her head. “Hey!”

She spun, stared up at him, trapped by his half-naked body. He really wouldn’t hurt her. She believed that with everything she had left of a heart. But him and his LaSalle blood and his kindness and his protection and—oh, God—and his talented mouth and fingers and sex!

He’d trapped her, all the same.

“You need me to clean and bandage that wound,” he insisted, and she saw peripherally that he held a handful of first aid supplies. “Not acting crazy would help, too.”

Crazy. She’d pretended to be crazy sometimes, to survive prison. Maybe it hadn’t been pretending. Sibyl breathed in the scent of Trace, stared up at his swarthy, whiskered face and reached—not for his face, but for his wrist. The one bracing the door shut. At some point she must have dropped the gauze. The touch of his skin hurt her palm.

Somehow, Sibyl managed another word, after all. She turned away from him, more fully toward the door. She looked one more time over her shoulder. She forced the breath—oxygen, fuel—to say, “Please.”

Somehow, she must have convinced him. He moved his hand.

She fumbled the door open, then ran.

Behind her, Trace stood in the doorway watching until Sibyl turned a corner, out of sight. He didn’t mind the frigid air, despite still being shirtless. This was Texas, after all, not Alaska. He had more serious business to sort out—something almost anyone would insist was not his strong point.

Her name was Isabel? She and freakin’ Dillon Charles knew each other? Had the everything-but sex somehow scared her off—and how was he going to get her back, if it had? Because something had happened between them, not just in his bed this morning but at the match last night, and over the week or so before that. Something powerful, and delicate and important. Something that needed protecting. He had to get her back—or at least make sure she was okay, before he left her alone.

Instead, he stood there on Greta’s front porch, shirtless and strangely unfeeling of the cold, until Smith Donnell and his girlfriend, Arden, pulled up in front of the house. Smith got out of the passenger side—it was Arden’s car—but still came around to open the door for the dark-haired sophisticate. Because that’s the kind of ladylike, chivalrous treatment Arden expected, so that was the kind of treatment she got.

Not for the first time, Trace found himself wondering what kind of treatment Sibyl expected.

“Aren’t you cold?” drawled Arden as they reached him, something about her poise not making him feel at all like a clumsy, lecherous bull in an antique china shop.

Smith didn’t hold to the same level of etiquette. “God, Trace, you look like you were playing paint ball naked—and I can’t tell if the purples or the browns won. Go put on some clothes so we can figure out what to do about this Charles situa—hey, is that blood?”

Trace looked down and saw the smear of drying, red-brown on his wrist. Sibyl’s blood. Way too close to his hand for comfort. He might not be into symbolism, but damn.

Suddenly, for reasons he couldn’t begin to catalog, Trace felt sicker than he’d ever felt after the worst gut-punch he’d ever taken.

Dillon Napoleon Charles did not pace the handsomely understated den of the Fort Worth Donnell mansion. He came from a long, long line of kings and heroes, descending from Charlemagne. He had better presence than that.

But he would very much have liked to pace.

Isabel Daine knew about the Comitatus?

“Good morning, Mr. Charles,” drawled Will Donnell, strolling into the den with equal presence. Dillon had known the man’s son, Smith, in college. Father and son favored each other; ironic, considering that the father now held local command of the society his son had rejected. The elder Donnell even wore blue jeans for this face to face meeting, instead of the expected business casual.

“Sir,” Dillon greeted, choosing strained respect over what a more vulgar man might: something more like
good for whom?
or perhaps even
are you bloody well joking?
“I found my own morning troubling. As you are the area overlord, it seemed only fitting I come to you first.”

“Please, call me Will.” Will gestured to a pair of leather wingback chairs by the window. “I would offer you a drink, but considering the hour, can I ring for coffee?”

“No, thank you.”
I’d probably just choke on it. Or spit it at you.

Sinking into the offered seat, Dillon reminded himself again that with nobility came obligations—literally. Too many Comitatus members had forgotten the rule of
noblesse oblige.

“So how are things New Orleans way?” Will settled easily into the chair across from Dillon’s. “I was sorry to hear about your father the other year.”

“Thank you. Time has helped, and Judge LaSalle…”
Has been like a second father to me.
But to try to explain to this near-stranger the bond of LaSalle losing his only son—his only legitimate son, at least—and Dillon losing his father would have made for embarrassing pathos. “He has proven himself a strong leader for the New Orleans powers. You have suffered a regrettable loss of your own, sir, in your predecessor, Donaldson Leigh.”

Will nodded.

“I fear that the rumors do not put the Texas Comitatus in the best light,” noted Dillon.
Murdered by one of his own men?
“If a subordinate was turning rogue, you of all men should know how to handle it.”

Because Will Donnell’s own son had turned rogue along with several compatriots, including the baseborn Beaudry. Their crime? What used to be called
lèse majesté,
criminal insubordination. History taught that an organization as finely tuned as the powerful, multi-national Comitatus could not last without strong levels of hierarchy.

Hence Dillon’s respectful deference to a man for whom, in his heart, he felt nothing but disgust. Trace Beaudry had been a lost cause from the start, because of his illegitimacy. But Smith Donnell and Mitch Talbott? They’d been born of blue blood, deserving of all the rights Dillon still held. Something must have spoiled them, tainted them, and parents seemed as likely to blame as anybody.

Will clearly saw the direction of Dillon’s thoughts—about his son, if not the disgust—but he showed it only through a twitch in his tanned cheek. “Thankfully, that insubordinate was dealt with.”

“And yet cracks remain in the propriety of your…branch of the society.” Time to get to his point. “I fear this is not only a courtesy call, although I owe you that much as well, being in your territory. In my pursuit of property stolen from Judge LaSalle, I have discovered a troubling breach of secrecy under your very nose. Women, Will. Women, who know about the Comitatus.”

Will raised his eyebrows, a surprisingly mild reaction. Not a good sign. “If you refer to a certain Ms. Greta Kaiser, I have no reason to believe she knows about us, despite her late father’s involvement in the society. It was because of his blood, not any intelligence on her part, that I agreed to give her home sanctuary status.”

Dillon stared. A grandfather clock ticked ominously.

“The assurance of our loved ones’ safety is, after all, one of the benefits of belonging to the society,” Will reminded him. As if simply belonging—knowing you were one of the best and brightest and most important—wasn’t the ultimate benefit.

“The women knew enough to send me to you.”

“By name? Did they use any words such as ‘secret society’ or ‘Comitatus’? I have no cause to believe that anybody has broken his vow of secrecy.”

“I’m not saying anybody did.” Anybody like Will’s son? Smith Donnell, as an exile, should be dead to his father, the way Trace Beaudry was as dead to the judge as René LaSalle Jr. How many undeserving types was Will protecting? “But Ms. Kaiser had a girl with her, a former convict named Isabel Daine. I knew the girl long ago, before her arrest for arson and patricide. She’s something of a genius and, I believe, holds a grudge against us. She could be uncovering our secrets with or without the help of the exiles.”

At least now, Will looked surprised. “How could she hold a grudge against us if nobody disclosed information?”

“It might behoove you to find out. You are the leader around here, aren’t you?” Damn. The man’s calm was pushing Dillon to flat-out insubordination. “Sir.”

“But therein lies the problem. While we appreciate your assistance, we are not wholly ignorant of the goings-on at Ms. Kaiser’s residence. We have reason to believe that she’s taken in certain…outcasts. We have no evidence that they mean to cause trouble—”

You aren’t looking for evidence is more likely,
thought Dillon.

“—and barring that, it would be beneath me, in my position of authority, to acknowledge their existence. If exiled Comitatus members were given the chance to address members of the inner circles they might become a nuisance, pleading their innocence, petitioning for reinstatement, etc. I could, of course, send a subordinate to conduct the interview but, as you noted, our local powers are currently recovering from a grave loss in our late leader. With Leigh’s murder so fresh, I’ve yet to find someone with both the appropriate intelligence and the necessary objectivity to retain the equanimity our position dictates. In fact, I was considering bringing in a member from the outside to gather information for us.”

“Someone like me.”

Now Will Donnell sat back, gratifying relief on his tanned face. “You would do that for us?”

“As I said, I am investigating the theft of an important artifact from Judge René LaSalle, and I have reason to believe that the exiles know something about it. May I have your permission to conduct an interview on your territory regarding both that theft and the threat of persons such as Isabel Daine?”

“Conduct interviews, yes. But, I apologize for any insult, yet recent events dictate I clarify. You do not have permission to conduct violence.”

If he’d had less dignity, Dillon might have rolled his eyes. “There is a time and place for everything, sir. The rules of our society are, to me, sacrosanct.”

“Thank you. Then I look forward to your report.” And the two men shook. Dillon supposed Donnell might be somehow playing him, but to what purpose? He had to believe that, bad seed of a son or not, Will Donnell also followed the dictates of the society.